“As the inventors and leading developers of MongoDB, 10gen is pleased to support Rackspace and their customers in the launch of Rackspace’s first non-relational database as a service product,” says Max Schireson, CEO, 10gen.

“We think the market will be excited to see Rackspace deliver a NoSQL DBaaS offer based on MongoDB, the most popular NoSQL database.”

Independent research director Matt Aslett from 451 Research believes the move will expand Rackspace's database services to support non-relational operational applications.

"MongoDB is emerging as the primary NoSQL database of choice," he said. "Driven by its flexibility and ease of development, giving Rackspace an opportunity to serve existing customers with a new service and target new customers by providing differentiating configuration and management capabilities."